In this study, we investigated how various teaching behaviors influence student interest as a situational variable. Specifically, we studied how behaviors related to "catch" interest (i.e., ephemeral aspects of the learning environment such as instructor humor, nonverbal immediacy, intellectual stimulation) and "hold" interest…

Instructors' use of humor is generally a positive influence on student outcomes. However, examinations of humor have found that specific types of messages may not impact, or may even reverse, its positive effect. Instructional humor processing theory (IHPT) has been used to explain how humor impacts student learning. The current study sought to…

Using rhetorical/relational goal theory as a guiding frame, we examined relationships between instructor misbehaviors (i.e., indolence, incompetence, and offensiveness) and the likelihood of students communicating antisocial behavioral alteration techniques (BATs). More specifically, the study focused on whether students' perceptions of instructor…

This study replicated and extended a preliminary typology of appropriate and inappropriate teacher humor and advanced three explanations for differences in interpretations of teacher humor. Students were more likely to view teacher humor as inappropriate when it was perceived as offensive and when it demeaned students as a group or individually.…